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A spike or point on an implement or tool, especially a prong of a fork or a tooth of a comb.
1920, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan the Untamed:
The tines of the fork were quite evidently of iron or steel, the girl did not know which, while the handle and the spoon were of the same material as the smaller vessels.
Sitting at the table one day, I held the fork in my left hand and pierced a piece of fried chicken. I put the knife through the second tine, as we had been strictly taught, and began to saw against the bone.
“I answer not the challenge of my prisoner,” said Front-de-Bœuf; “nor shalt thou, Maurice de Bracy.—Giles,” he continued, “hang the franklin’s glove upon the tine of yonder branched antlers:[…]
“By my faith, sirs,” he continued, half turning in his saddle to address his escort, “unless my woodcraft is sadly at fault, it is a stag of six tines and the finest that we have roused this journey.
1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost., London: [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker; nd by Robert Boulter; nd Matthias Walker,, →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books:, London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1873, →OCLC:
The Air attrite to Fire, as late the Clouds / Juſtling or puſht with Winds rude in thir ſhock / Tine the ſlant Lightning, […]
a.1701 (date written), John Dryden, “The First Book of Homer’s Ilias”, in The Miscellaneous Works of John Dryden,, volume IV, London: J and R Tonson,, published 1760, →OCLC:
The priest with holy hands was seen to tine / The cloven wood, and pour the ruddy wine.
1852, Alfred the Great, translated by Alfred Committee, The Whole Works of King Alfred the Great, volume II, page 388:
When I was then surrounded on every side by the fiends, and tined about by the blindness of the darkness, then hove I my eyes up and looked hither and yond, whether any help were to come to me, that I might be rescued; […]
“Terrible trying,” said Oak. “I’ve been wet through twice a-day, either in snow or rain, this last fortnight. Cainy and I haven’t tined our eyes to-night.”
Borg, Alexander (2004) A Comparative Glossary of Cypriot Maronite Arabic (Arabic–English) (Handbook of Oriental Studies; I.70), Leiden and Boston: Brill, page 178
Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 72